Technical analysis: Moderna stock soars 177% and Merck stock gains 12.6% on melanoma vaccine data
The 19 August session was not written by the macro picture. It was written by a single clinical readout: Moderna stock closed 176.97% higher and Merck stock 12.60% higher after phase 3 data on the personalised melanoma vaccine the two companies developed together — a 49% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death and a 59% reduction in distant metastasis. The whole of US biotech moved behind them, and Wall Street snapped a three-day losing run.
In the cards below you will find the technical analysis of the names that moved the day — Moderna, Merck, CRISPR Therapeutics, Marvell, Broadcom, Nvidia and Coinbase on Wall Street, Stellantis, STM, Intesa Sanpaolo and Leonardo on the Milan market — and for each one where our model stands, long or short, with the date the signal fired. We open with this week's new buy signals and close with SPY against QQQ, the two US ETF baskets, which finished yesterday with opposite signs.
- This week's new buy signals
- Health care technical analysis: Moderna up 177%, Merck up 12.6%
- Semiconductor stocks: the Marvell-Google deal
- Bitcoin clears 68,000 dollars
- Baidu stock and Alibaba stock
- Milan market: Stellantis stock up 5.9%, banks in retreat
- AstraZeneca stock and the European front
- European indices: one of the four is still far from its record
- The ETFs that moved the session
- This week's earnings
- SPY and QQQ technical analysis
This week's new buy signals: the eight whose short horizon still agrees
The weekly analysis that closed on Friday opened thirty new buy signals. Below are eight of the thirteen that, three sessions on, still have the daily signal aligned with the weekly one, picked across profiles and sectors.
Health care technical analysis: Moderna stock up 177%, Merck stocks up 12.6%
The phase 3 trial of the personalised melanoma vaccine — intismeran autogene, built from each patient's own tumour — showed, in combination with immunotherapy, a 49% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death and a 59% reduction in distant metastasis. Moderna closed 176.97% higher, with market capitalisation moving from roughly 25 to 69 billion dollars, and Moderna stocks ended the day as the most traded story on the tape; Merck &, the programme's partner, gained 12.60%.
The wave carried the whole sector: Hims & Hers Health up 13.51%, Recursion Pharmaceuticals up 13.27%, CRISPR Therapeutics up 12.91%, Novavax up 10.84%, Beam Therapeutics up 9.41%, Danaher up 5.97%, Amgen up 4.02%, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals up 3.78%, Pfizer up 3.63%. Short sellers took roughly 5.5 billion dollars in paper losses in a single day.
Semiconductor stocks: the Marvell-Google deal rewrites custom silicon
Marvell Technology granted Google a warrant to buy up to almost 59 million shares at 206.58 dollars — a potential value near 12.2 billion — as part of an agreement to develop custom chips for artificial intelligence: inference accelerators, storage, networking and memory controllers. Vesting tranches are tied to Google's chip purchases and run through fiscal 2033; if the targets are met the deal could be worth roughly 120 billion in multi-year sales. The shares closed 9.85% higher.
The bill landed on its direct rival in that same market: Broadcom fell 4.61%, and Broadcom stocks closed at the bottom of the large-cap chip group. Around them the sector felt the squeeze of high yields and rising crude — Advanced Micro Devices down 3.71%, Intel down 4.02% — while NVIDIA held the line, shedding less than a point ahead of its 26 August results.
Bitcoin clears 68,000 dollars: the digital complex comes back to life
After several difficult weeks the digital complex staged a sharp rebound. Bitcoin cleared 68,000 dollars, up 6% with an intraday high near 69,750, dragging Strategy up 12.68%, Coinbase Global up 9.55%, MARA up 7.70% and Riot Platforms up 2.49%.
Three catalysts arrived together: the doubling of long-dated debt buybacks announced by the US Treasury from September, the market regulator's 18 August proposal for a first set of rules covering token offerings, and a White House meeting between the heads of the two regulators and industry operators. The complex nonetheless remains deeply negative for the year to date.
Baidu stock and Alibaba stock: advertising fades, cloud runs
Baidu, which reported on 18 August, confirmed a difficult transition: revenue down 4% year on year at 31.3 billion renminbi and online advertising down 19%, but with AI cloud growing 50% and the graphics-card segment up 283%. The shares recovered 2.20% yesterday. The group is moving towards a dual primary listing in Hong Kong, with an extraordinary meeting scheduled for 26 August.
Alibaba closed 0.59% higher and reports today, Thursday 20 August, alongside Walmart.
Milan market technical analysis: Stellantis stock up 5.9%, banks in retreat
The FTSE MIB gave up 0.75% in a directionless session, and the movement was all internal to the index. Stellantis Milano led at plus 5.90%; the banking block trailed, with Monte dei Paschi down 2.19%, Mediobanca down 2.01%, Intesa Sanpaolo down 1.37% and UniCredit down 1.21%, in the wake of a European sector that shed 1.41%. Also lower: STMicroelectronics down 3.02% on the semiconductor wave, Fincantieri down 1.66%, Leonardo down 1.17%, Avio down 1.02% and Nexi down 0.60%.
On the corporate front attention stays fixed on banking consolidation: Intesa Sanpaolo's exchange offer for Monte dei Paschi, a 30.6 billion transaction, and talk of moves around Banco BPM and Banca Generali.
AstraZeneca stock: the denied merger and a share price that barely moves
London barely moved, with the FTSE 100 closing just 15 points higher. The case of the day remains AstraZeneca and the possible merger with Bristol Myers Squibb, a transaction of roughly 400 billion dollars that has been discussed since the start of the month: during the session a source close to the file denied that talks are under way, and the shares closed 2.07% higher. GSK also did well, up 1.48%.
In Frankfurt the picture was the semiconductor one: Infineon Technologies shed 3.95%, while SAP gained 1.86%.
European indices: the same signal for twenty weeks, and one of the four is still far from its record
All four European baskets carry a buy signal opened in the spring, with very different results. FTSE MIB leads with 13.40% from the signal of the week of 7 April and sits 2.62% below its own record; DAX carries 5.43% from 13 April and is 1.61% below its high; CAC 40 5.13% from 7 April and is 2.82% below. FTSE 100, the London basket, has the same signal from the same day and has produced 1.23%.
Yesterday the moves were tiny and almost indistinguishable: Milan gave up 0.75%, Paris and Frankfurt closed all but flat, London rose 0.19% and was the best of the four for a second straight session.
The ETFs that moved the session: from the gold ETF to the US healthcare ETF
The session reads better through the instruments than through single names. Sanita USA, the US healthcare ETF, gained 3.51% and was the best sector of the day; ETF sull'oro, the gold ETF, rose 3.84%, lifted by the return of the rate-cut trade after the US Treasury announcement. In Europe the basic resources ETF added 3.28% and is the continent's best basket over the month as well, at 11.57%.
At the other end ETF sui semiconduttori, the semiconductor ETF, lost 2.21% and Tecnologia USA, the US technology ETF, 1.07%: the latter is down 3.35% on the week and still up 4.51% over the month.
This week's earnings: Alibaba and Walmart today, Nvidia next Wednesday
Ten names in our universe report within seven days, and for each one you will find where our model stands.
Thursday 20 August
Alibaba Long
Walmart Short
Tuesday 25 August
Intuit Long
Zoom Communications Long
Wednesday 26 August
Salesforce Long
CrowdStrike Short
HP Long
Li Auto Long
NVIDIA Long
Thursday 27 August
Autodesk Long
SPY and QQQ technical analysis: same market, same day, opposite signs
S&P 500, the S&P 500 ETF, gained 0.21% and Invesco QQQ Trust, the Nasdaq 100 ETF, lost 0.20%. Weights explain the divergence in full: the first carries 9.47% in health care against the second's 5.11%, so it holds almost twice the exposure to the sector that rose 3.51% yesterday; and it carries 32.91% in technology against 50.54%, that is two thirds of the exposure to the sector that fell 1.07%.
Their ages remain just as different. The S&P 500 basket is in the twentieth week of its signal, up 13.19% from entry with all three profit-taking windows already banked; the Nasdaq basket is in its second, down 2.05% with every window still ahead. The first sits 1.32% below its record, the second 4.35%.
When a single clinical readout makes the day, the macro takes a back seat
The underlying picture eased across the board, and that is the context for everything else. The four gauges of tension fell together — equity volatility by 6.0%, bond volatility by 5.0%, the BTP-Bund spread by 1.5% and tail risk by half a point — the day after long-dated yields stopped climbing. Over the four-week window all four were already lower: now the short frame has realigned with the long one.
The two most violent moves outside equities say the same thing from two sides. Gold gained 4.4% in a single session and the dollar lost 0.8%, both well beyond their normal range: the rate-cut trade, which looked deflated in midweek, came back to life when the US Treasury said it would buy more long-dated debt. Crude, by contrast, moved barely a point, even though tensions around the Strait of Hormuz have led the front pages for days.
The measure to keep an eye on over the coming days is market participation, the gauge of how many shares rise alongside the index: it is in a third day of decline, but yesterday it gave up less than a point against three and a half the day before, so the fall is slowing. Over the long window it is still up 14%. A rally with broadening participation stands on many legs; when participation withdraws, the legs get counted, and that is the kind of measure that in our ai trading weighs more than any single earnings print.
What you find here. If you are trying to understand how to manage risk in trading — stops, break-even stops, trailing, and the declaration of stops that have been taken out — or how to read chart patterns (double bottoms, Bollinger bands, the Ichimoku cloud, price action trading), this is the desk's trading journal: published every morning before the US premarket, with our model's position on every instrument mentioned.
The full analyses behind the cards on this page.